Thursday, February 19, 2004

A Birthday Story

A few people have asked for the details of the birth day, and I guess I kinda left that part out, huh? Ok, here goes:

We had been shopping for a new car for the past couple of days, and had finally just decided on one. We signed the papers, and went home for a nap (car shopping is tiring, ya know). Shelley's belly (hehe) had been contracted most the day, but since the due date was still 5 days away, we didn't think much of it; assumed it was just the kid getting into launch position...

We were planning on a couple of hours nap-time, then go out for a Valentine's Day dinner. We got home around 4:30pm, and the phone rang a couple times, effectively eliminating any chances for sleep. About 5:45pm Shelley got up to go to the bathroom and said something like, "ok, something just happened... I think my water just broke". She confirmed that her water had indeed broke, and asked me to call Jessica (her Lamaze coach in my absence), and tell her what had happened, and that we'd call her from the hospital. Jessica was so excited, I didn't get a chance to tell her much more than "Shelley's water just broke" ... she said she would meet us at the hospital. It was a good thing too...

We got to the hospital around 6:15pm, and was on our way to the birthing ward when Shelley had her first painful contraction. She had to squat for a few seconds before she could keep walking. Jessica was already there, and we went straight to a room. The clock in that room was broken: one of those old analog clocks with a 'second' sweep hand that kept slipping at the bottom, and took about 20 seconds to go from :35 to :36. This made timing contractions very interesting, especially since none of us highly intelligent people could figure out the stupid digital watch we had brought.

Shelley's contractions seemed very close together for being this soon in the process (at least to me, who only had second-hand knowledge to these things), and when the nurse checked her dilation at about 6:30pm, she was already at 5cm (10cm is baby-time).

Her contractions were also very painful. It was later explained to us that since the delivery came on so suddenly, her endorphins hadn't had time to kick in and help the pain, so she was feeling them full-on. The nurse asked her what she wanted to do about the pain. An epidural would take a little while to take effect, but would last for as long as was needed. There was another procedure that we can't remember the name of, but it would work immediately, but only last a couple of hours. Shelley wanted the epidural, but when the resident doctor came in to administer it, about 20 minutes later, he was prepping, and asked the nurse to check Shelley's dilation again. She was at 8-9cm, and an epidural would not take effect in time. They did the other thing... also a good thing...

The obstetrician arrived around 7pm; we had interrupted his Valentine's dinner with his wife... He changed clothes and immediately went to work.

I'll spare you the messy details, but suffice it to say that Shelley did a great job, and Baby Boy Grattan was born at 8:12pm on February 14th, 2004. He wasn't dubbed Geoffrey Ryan Grattan until around 10am the following morning, when we agreed on it.

Shelley insists I point out a couple of things: First, that I stop telling everyone her labor was "easy". I think I said that to a few people, and I didn't mean to insinuate that it wasn't hard. I will never know the pain of labor, except for my mother and Shelley reminding me how difficult it is...

Also, we're calling him Ryan. His full name is Geoffrey Ryan Grattan, but until he's old enough to decide what he prefers, his name is Ryan. We both got what we wanted. I like the name Ryan, and it's been well-documented that I wanted Geoffrey. So... there you go.